
flass E. 4 5 J 



Book 






THE 



Birthday of Abraham Lincoln 






4B»" 



SPEECHES 



JOSEPH G. DARLINGTON, ESQ., 
HAMPTON L. CARSON, ESQ., 

AND 

MARCUS A. BROWNSON, D. D., 



RESPONSE TO TOASTS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE 
UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, 

February 13, 1899. 



THE 

BIRTHDAY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



.1 ' 



THE 

Birthday of Abraham Lincoln 



SPEECHES 



JOSEPH G. DARLINGTON, ESQ., 
HAMPTON L CARSON, ESQ., 

AND 

MARCUS A. BROWNSON, D. D., 



RESPONSE TO TOASTS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE 
UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, 

February' 13, 1899. 



IN EXCHANGK 

It OtK 



si 



THE 



BIRTHDAY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

i 



The annual banquet of the Union League of Phila- 
delphia in commemoration of the birth of Abraham 
Lincoln was held in the beautifully decorated assembly 
room of the club-house on the evening of Monday, 
February 13, 1899. The inclement weather and the 
exceptional violence of the prevailing storm prevented 
a full attendance of the members of the League and 
compelled the absence of two distinguished guests 
from a distance, who had been invited to respond to 
toasts— viz., Hon. Albert J. Beveridge, United States 
Senator from Indiana, and Mr. Booker T. Washington, 
A.M., Principal of the Tuskegee Normal School, of 
Alabama, both of whom were delayed en route. 

The President of the Union League, Mr. Joseph G. 
Darlington, presided. 

President Darlington prefaced the formal call for 
responses to toasts with some pertinent remarks. He 
said : 

"Gentlemen, as we sit in this comfortable room, 
surrounded by flowers indicative of spring, it is diffi- 

3 



4 

cult for us to appreciate the violence of the storm that 
is raging without, and which is covering almost the 
entire country. The storm is the explanation of the 
absence of so many of our guests this evening. It 
is also the explanation of why two of the gentlemen 
whom we had anticipated listening to with so much 
pleasure are not with us. Mr. Washington is some- 
where between New York and Philadelphia ; Senator 
Beveridge, from whom we have had several telegrams 
during the day, is at Coatesville. The Senator is 
evidently as much distressed at not being with us 
as we are disappointed by his absence. I have re- 
ceived two telegrams from him since we have 
been at dinner — both from Coatesville. The last 
indicates that he is of a sanguine temperament. 
His first telegram reads: "Our train was due at 
Philadelphia at five o'clock this morning. Now at 
Coatesville. Probably will arrive by nine o'clock this 
evening." His second telegram reads : " Still at 
Coatesville. No information as to progress. Rail- 
road people can inform you when we will arrive." 
Unfortunately, our friends at the Broad Street station 
say they can not give us any information on the sub- 
ject. Therefore we will not have the pleasure this 
evening of hearing from Senator Beveridge or Mr. 
Washington. 

" Gentlemen, ninety years ago there was born of the 
humblest parentage, amid poverty and wretchedness, 



5 

a child who was destined to become one of the 
greatest and most remarkable characters in history. 
We have assembled to-night for the purpose of pay- 
ing a tribute of respect to his memory, and gratefully 
to acknowledge the greatness of his life, the purity 
of his life, such was the man — Abraham Lincoln. 
The casual reader will fail to discover any indication 
of greatness, but the careful reader of history will 
have no difficulty in detecting in his boyhood and 
early manhood the elements of a noble character 
which rapidly developed to completeness. If I should 
be asked to name what I consider were the greatest 
characteristics of Mr. Lincoln, I should unhesitatingly 
answer absolute, innate honesty ; — honesty in thought, 
honesty of purpose, honesty in deed ; entire simplicity ; 
a true man, true to himself, true to all men ; a man 
of the people ; a plain man, and so the plain people 
understood him, believed in him, and trusted him. 
And, gentlemen, let us not lose sight of the fact, that 
it is the plain people who rule the universe, for they 
are honest, and they recognize an honest man when 
they come in contact with him. Neither can deceive 
the other. The brains and the labor of the plain 
people of our land constitute the glory of the nation. 
In my judgment no higher encomium can be paid to 
the memory of Mr. Lincoln than to say that he was 
a plain man, and was believed in and trusted by the 
plain people. Together, under the guidance of the 



Almighty, they preserved the honor of the nation, 
and restored peace throughout its borders. 

" It is well that, in our busy and hurried lives, we 
should pause to recall the characters and deeds of the 
great men of our country who now rest from their 
labors ; and it is peculiarly fitting that The Union 
League should assemble out of respect to the memory 
of this great man ; for, gentlemen, The Union League 
was organized in the early part of Mr. Lincoln's ad- 
ministration, when the affairs of the country were in 
the most discouraging and disheartening condition, 
when it was a very grave question whether the Union 
would, or could be preserved. To uphold the Presi- 
dent, to aid the Government, was the object of the 
founders of The Union League. 

"Among all the glorious characters in our country's 
history Abraham Lincoln stands forth as a sunburst, 
casting its brilliancy over mankind throughout the 
world. We thank God for sending such a man to 
earth. The effect and influence of his life will endure 
throughout the ages, and as the years roll by the 
world will understand the man better, and be more and 
more convinced and impressed with his greatness." 

The President then introduced, in complimentary 
terms, the first speaker of the evening, Hampton L. 
Carson, Esq., upon whom he called to respond to the 
toast, "The Real Greatness of Lincoln." 



The Real Greatness of Lincoln. 

Hampton L. Carson, Esq., responded. After a cor- 
dial greeting-, he said : 

" Mr. President and Members of the Union League : 
I consider it a distinguished honor and a rare privi- 
lege to be called upon, on this occasion, to respond 
to such a toast. Much of what I might have said 
has been most exquisitely and fittingly said by you, 
Mr. President, in the few but happy and expressive 
words which you have used in describing the char- 
acter of Abraham Lincoln. I can do little but add 
to what you have said. 

" For some fifteen years or more I have been a dili- 
gent collector of the engraved portraits of all the 
great men who have taken part in the making and 
development of America since the time of Columbus. 
I think it is safe to say that there are 30,000 pieces in 
that collection ; pictures of statesmen, Presidents, ex- 
plorers, bankers, lawyers, merchants, manufacturers — 
all those who have assisted in building up the mighty 
buttresses of our institutions, and who led in every 
needed reform or in the extension of a useful move- 
ment. Of Mr. Lincoln I have at least one hundred 
different pictures ; and it is not too much to say that the 
most dignified, the most thoughtful, the most rugo-ed, a s 
well as the saddest face in the vast army of leaders is 
his. A gaunt, tall form ; a firm-set head, with beet- 



8 

ling brows, and 'eyes from which the soul of an immor- 
tal sorrow looks ' ; a spirit baptized in that rain of 
blood which drenched the sod and the forests of the 
Southern States until his heart grew sick with orief : 
a spirit which embodied the woe of Lear and the 
tragedy of Hamlet, and which would have broken be- 
neath the weight had it not been enlivened by en- 
joyment of the humor of the ' Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor' and the merriment of the 'Midsummer Night's 
Dream.' I never look at those pictures without recall- 
ing two scenes of April, 1865. I was but a boy of 
thirteen, but if I live to be ninety and nine, unless my 
faculties decay, I can never lose the memory of them. 
The old city of Philadelphia, by night, was indeed dark 
and dismal ; here and there was a straggling gas-lamp, 
everywhere badly paved streets, made more gloomy 
by the tightly closed front shutters, through which not 
a single hospitable gleam shot out from any parlor on 
the sidewalk — a drearier or more depressing scene I 
can not recall. And yet one night I remember when 
every house from the Schuylkill to the Delaware, and 
from League Island to Germantown, was ablaze with 
light ; flags were afloat upon the joyous breeze ; the 
ground resounded beneath the tread of multitudes 
who shouted in triumph; troops of happy boys, of 
which I was one, ran up and down the streets, sing- 
ing, ' Rally 'round the flag, boys,' ' Marching through 
Georgia,' or 'We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour 



apple tree ' ; the solid earth quivered with a joy- 
ous palpitation which indicated, by a strange, sub- 
terranean murmur, that the feelings of the nation, 
so long pent up, had found a voice in exultation 
over the surrender of Lee, and the conviction that 
at last there was full assurance that this Union was, 
and should remain for all time, 'an indissoluble 
Union of indestructible States.' In a few days that 
scene had changed. I recollect the State House 
wreathed in black; every block of buildings was 
draped in sable; every house stood with shutters 
bowed ; every man, with pallid face, whispered to his 
neighbors ; women spoke in convulsive sobs ; children 
ceased their play, hushed and awe-stricken; every 
officer on the street had crape upon his arm, or wore 
the rosette of mourning; our daily newspapers were 
bordered with broad, black bands ; there was a suffo- 
cating grief in the air, which, as a child, I felt but 
could not explain. Was it because the President of 
the United States was dead? Was it because our 
victory had been shorn of its fulfilment by the loss of 
our leader ? No ; it was because the greatest soul 
of the nineteenth century had passed from earth to 
immortality. 

"What was the secret of this man's greatness? 
Ah ! what is the secret of the strength of iron, of the 
tenacity of steel, of the fiber of the oak ? You must 
answer, It is a secret of the eternal hills; it is a 



IO 

riddle of the elements, a mystery connected with 
those dim, far-distant times when raw material was 
shaped in the womb of the mountains. The secret 
of Abraham Lincoln's greatness must be sought for 
in the evolution of family isolation, in the struggle 
with primeval forces, in a life spent in the loneli- 
ness of untrodden forests ; in a state of society when 
men had no strong nation at their backs to sustain 
them in their rights, when they had to hew out for 
themselves a solution of every problem in their 
grapple with a harsh condition of life, and in con- 
flict with a savage foe which still hung upon the 
borders of the wilderness. 

" Lincoln could trace his forefathers back for six 
generations to respectable ancestry — Charles Lincoln, 
I think it was, who came from Norwich to Hingham, 
Mass., his descendants coming into Berks County, 
Pa., removing into Virginia ; and then the grand- 
father, who was a co-pioneer with Daniel Boone, push- 
ing into old Kentucky — but the sad fact must be told : 
his father was a luckless rover, a miserable squatter, 
moving about from State to State in a vain search for 
the acquisition of property. He went from Kentucky 
to Indiana, and from Indiana to Illinois. His mother, 
— what matters it that she knew not whence she 
came? — is it not immortality for her womanhood to 
have been the mother of Abraham Lincoln ? 

"A boyhood spent, as your president has told you, 



II 



amid squalid, poverty-stricken, coarse, low, ignorant 
surroundings ; in a half-faced cabin scarcely as snug 
as the winter cavern of a bear ; and yet the seed of 
that immortal spirit, planted in such a soil, nurtured 
by such surroundings, was developed by adversity into 
a noble growth. No other President of the United 
States ever sprang from so lowly an origin, — nay, 
from such a pit. It is a familiar story in America for 
men to rise from poverty to the White House ; it is a 
familiar story to trace the barefooted boy through the 
various positions of clerk, storekeeper, member of the 
Legislature, member of Congress, to high position in 
the Cabinet or in the White House ; but the fact 
that he became President is not the crowning feature 
of his career. It is true he had but one year's school- 
ing in all his life ; it is true that as a backwoodsman 
he split rails for Nancy Miller, at the rate of four 
hundred for every yard of jean cloth stained, in 
walnut-juice, for a pair of trousers, as his price ; it is 
true that as a flat-boatman he floated down the broad 
waters of the Illinois to the Ohio, and from the Ohio 
to the Mississippi ; and that there, on some Southern 
wharf, he beheld a scene of the slave-market which 
first drove the iron into his soul. He recorded no vow 
like that of Hannibal at the altar, but between clenched 
teeth he muttered, ' If it ever comes within my power 
to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard.' {Applause.) 

"A surveyor; a postmaster, with his office in his 



12 



hat ; a member of the Legislature without great dis- 
tinction, but active in securing the removal of the 
capital of the State from Vandalia to Springfield ; a 
member of Congress without attracting particular 
attention ; finally working out for himself the problems 
that revolved before his mind ; thinking, as the man 
who knew him best once said, more than any other 
man in America ever thought, and reading less, because 
books were few and opportunities for thought were 
many, — thinking, as he rode upon his horse across 
the broad prairie, where the quail whistled to its mate 
and the red deer sprang from the ripened grass beside 
his path, — thinking of those mysterious problems as to 
the meaning of this Government, as to its powers and 
as to whether slavery could constitutionally be ex- 
cluded from the territories, — he finally worked out 
the answer, and in the discussions which led to their 
settlement achieved distinction by dint of his own 
inherent force of character, his conscientiousness, his 
courage, his intelligence, and his commanding position 
on the hustings. He rose so steadily and so loftily 
that he was at last in a position, when the Douglas 
debate gave him an opportunity to enter upon a 
death-grapple with the hateful wrong, in an argument 
which attracted attention in all parts of the country, 
and drew the eyes of all men to the Illinois campaign 
for senator, in which he routed the 'Little Giant,' and 
as a Rupert of Debate became immortal. 



*3 

"Had his career stopped there, we would still say, 
' There is nothing so extraordinary in this' ; but he 
had not yet reached the full measure of his stature. 
In the great conflict that followed he appeared at the 
Cooper Institute, and delivered a speech which made 
his reputation national, and then for the first time there 
flashed throughout the great, loyal, struggling region 
of the North a conviction that the bold declaration 
which had caused his defeat as a senator of the United 
States had made him a possible candidate for the 
Presidency : ' A house divided against itself can not 
stand ; this country can not remain half-slave and half- 
free ; I do not expect to see the Union dissolved, but 
I do expect to see it become wholly one or the other.' 
Time proved that he was right. 

" The gentlemen who were instrumental in forming 
this League remember well what the feeling was when 
it was announced that Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, 
and not William H. Seward, of New York, had been 
nominated by the Chicago Convention for the Presi- 
dency of the United States. Did any student of our 
history, familiar with the names and deeds of our 
former statesmen, make mention of him as a probable 
great leader? Was there any prophet among the 
statesmen of his day who foresaw either what he would 
accomplish or what he might be called upon to accom- 
plish? This ' mast- fed lawyer,' as he was called; 
this 'Illinois ape '; this 'half-horse, half-alligator'; this 



H 

man ' reared on the muck of the prairies '; this man 
'who tells a story when other men are grave'; this 
man 'who has had no experience in the affairs of life'; 
this man 'utterly destitute of knowledge and of 
foreign diplomacy'; this man 'who was elevated for 
the time being to a conspicuous position because of 
his debate with Senator Douglas ' — was this the man 
to be intrusted with the Presidency of the United 
States? Do we of to-day doubt Abraham Lincoln's 
ability, question his sagacity, or deny his mastery? 
Why, not one month had he been President of the 
United States before his cabinet knew that he was 
master. His Secretary of State, William H. Seward, 
the foremost statesman of his day, his most conspicu- 
ous rival, the man whose eloquence had charmed the 
Senate, whose knowledge of our foreign relations was 
world-wide, and whose fame was equally so; Chase, 
his Secretary of the Treasury, the most conspicuous of 
the Western antislavery men ; his Secretary of War, 
the most powerful man in Pennsylvania ; his Post- 
master-general, Mr. Blair, the leader in the border 
States ; his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, of 
Connecticut, commanding the support of New England 
— these men, coming together, assured themselves 
that if this raw, untrained giant of the West did not 
know how to run the Government, they could do it for 
him and keep his head and feet in line ! Within a 
month Mr. Seward informed the President that the 



15 

Government had no policy, either domestic or foreign ; 
and he had taken the liberty to sketch out a paper 
which he would submit for the President's considera- 
tion, and for the execution of which he himself would 
stand pledged. It proposed to drop out of sight 
entirely the slavery issue ; it proposed to call France, 
Spain, and England to a strict account, and, if they 
gave no satisfactory explanation of their actions, to 
wage a foreign war in the hope of reuniting the 
dissevered sections of the country in resolute resist- 
ance to foreigners. Mr. Lincoln, who had no knowl- 
edge by experience of foreign policy, quietly pocketed 
that paper and, in terms polite but firm, allowed Mr. 
Seward to know that the President of the United 
States, who had sworn to uphold the Constitution and 
maintain the laws, and whose oath to do it had been 
taken on the east front of the capitol, would face the 
responsibilities of the position for himself. (Applause.) 
" He was the intellectual master of a cabinet of 
giants. Read the tributes of the men who did not 
like him. Read the unwilling admissions wrung from 
the lips of those who did not at first respect him. 
Read the tributes from the reluctant pens of critics 
who subsequently confessed themselves as pigmies in 
his presence. No doubt can there be as to whose was 
the ruling mind or whose the master-spirit through 
those long, dark, dreary years. His intellectual power 
was, it seems to me, the first and most conspicuous 



i6 

feature of his greatness. It was a power such as that 
exercised by John Marshall in jurisprudence, or Isaac 
Newton in philosophy, when stating a case or present- 
ing a proposition, the statement being in itself not 
only a vindication of the position assumed, but a logi- 
cal demonstration of its truth, unalterable, impreg- 
nable, and needing no argument for its support. ' If 
this thing- is not wrong, there can be nothings which is 
wrong; if slavery is right, then nothing is right.' In 
these few words he gave expression to a simple, clear, 
and direct view of the immorality of slavery. He had 
also an analytical power in which no man was his 
equal, combined with a calmness and courage which 
were divine. His patience, his firmness, his tenacity 
of purpose, the manner in which, after having formu- 
lated a proposition in his mind, he would cling to it, 
constituted the grandest element of strength in the 
totality of that strange, mysterious combination of in- 
congruous qualities which made up the sublime char- 
acter which stands accredited to his name. 

"He combined modesty with patience. 'lam the 
humblest man,' he said, ' ever called on to fill this 
office, and yet I have a duty to perform greater than 
that of any man, not excepting even George Wash- 
ington.' Behold his endurance ! We have seen the 
captain on the bridge of some great ship calmly issue 
his orders amid the howling of the storm ; we have 
applauded the presence of mind of the general who, in 



i7 

the storm of battle, coolly surveyed the field, marshalled 
his troops, or threw his squadrons upon hill-top or 
into valley to break the weakest line of the enemy ; 
we have admired the heroism of the engineer who, 
firing- his locomotive, rushed through blazing forests 
for a distance of miles, to save the lives of his passen- 
gers ; we have applauded the skill and celerity of the 
great commander who traversed ten thousand miles, 
through tropic seas, and brought his battleship around 
the Horn in time to share in a critical engagement ; 
but never was there such agony of endurance or self- 
possession imposed upon any man in high position as 
that which was required of the President of the United 
States from 1861 to 1865. A storm, however violent, 
in a few hours is over ; a battle in a few days is won ; 
a run of a few miles takes the engineer beyond the 
burning forest ; the sea-voyage of ten thousand miles 
is ended in two months ; but here was a man who, day 
by day, week by week, month by month, and year by 
year, bore with herculean shoulders the whole dreadful 
weight of responsibility, and faced the momentous 
issues of fate ; a man with a divided party at his 
back ; with Ben Wade, Thaddeus Stevens, and Henry 
Winter Davis issuing their flaming manifestoes against 
him in denunciation because he was not destructive 
enough or not aggressive enough. The earth opened, 
as he stood on the very edge of a flaming pit, but his 
head never reeled nor did his heart quail ; the sulphur- 



i8 

ous fumes of that devil's caldron rolled into the air, 
enveloping this republic in a conflagration such as, 
thank God, it will never see again ; but far above the 
vapors of hell the people saw, growing grander and 
more majestic as it loomed and rose higher and still 
higher, a firm, calm, sublime, self-regnant soul which, 
for them as well as for the black chattels of the South, 
lived but for the salvation of the Union and the emanci- 
pation of the slave ! (Applatise.) Beneath pressure 
from Congress ; with radical editors like Mr. Greeley 
and Henry Ward Beecher writing bitter editorials 
which, like mowing-machines, cut at every revolution ; 
with clamor from office-holders or shrieks of rage from 
disappointed applicants ; not knowing where he would 
find absolute support, whether from the radical or con- 
servative wing of his party, Mr. Lincoln clearly per- 
ceived, as no other man of his time did perceive, that 
if he but waited, the plain people (of whom he was the 
best and most expressive type) would some day come 
to his support. He knew that the war was one which 
could not be fought to success by noisy debaters in 
Congress, nor by the sons of a few rich men leaving 
their occupations and marching into the field, but that 
victory must depend upon the voluntary services of 
boys who, while dedicating themselves to the salvation 
of the Union, had not yet learned to associate Emanci- 
pation with Constitutional Preservation. He knew that 
he must sublimely wait. He waited, and the time 



19 

came. The second call for arms was made when the 
people were ready to receive it. And then, not from 
the slums of cities, not from the ooze of social swamps, 
not from the ranks of the dissolute and the idle, not 
from hirelings bought by bounty, not from hordes of 
adventurers, but from mill and factory, from barn and 
hamlet, from church and school-house, from cross-roads' 
store and gilded club, from drawing-room and work- 
shop, from mountain-top and valley, from lumber dis- 
trict and iron mine, from granite quarry and marl pit, 
poured ten thousand confluent streams of gallant 
'boys in blue,' their caps up-tossed to salute the flao- 
their souls uplifted by devotion to the Union, their 
eyes glistening with heroic resolution, their quick 
hearts beating to the music of the charge, while the 
winds, heavy-laden with the sighs of mothers, the tears 
of wives, the sobs of sisters, the blessings of fathers, 
bore down to the listening ears of that great, steadfast, 
silent, suffering man in the White House, the thunder 
of their battle-shout, 'We are coming, Father Abra- 
ham, three hundred thousand more ! ' {Cheers) 

" Ah, yes, he was the Father of his people ! There's 
no cant in that. He was the same man whose sympa- 
thetic heart could not affirm the death- sentence of a 
court-martial ; the man who revised and modified the 
action taken under the rules of war by every military 
body against deserters, spies, boys sleeping on their 
posts, or lads delayed on furlough ; the man to whom 



20 



the loss of a human life was as a personal loss ; the 
man who oftener set aside judgments of death than did 
any other human being who ever held a similar position 
or who was invested with similar power. How many 
hearts of wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters were 
gladdened by his merciful interposition ! The officers 
of the army did not like it. They sent him telegram 
after telegram, saying, ' Do not interfere with our find- 
ings ; you are destroying the discipline of the army ' ; 
but his response was, ' This is an army of volunteers 
for the salvation of the Union, and I can not apply to 
them the rules of the regular service when there are 
extenuating circumstances.' {Applause?) And so, 
gradually, a realization of the greatness, the mercy, and 
the goodness of the man extended all over the country. 
It was from no spirit of superstition, but simply from a 
child-like recognition of a patent truth that the colored 
preacher exclaimed, ' Massa Lincoln, he know ebery- 
ting, he eberywhere ; he walk de earf like de Lord ! ' 
Such a tribute from what many might call a be- 
nighted mind was the revelation of a universal senti- 
ment. 

" Some saw in Lincoln simply an idle story-teller, 
because when other men were grave, he sought to be 
jocose. I have read many of his alleged stories, and I 
know that an excellent reason for his habit was given 
by men who knew him well. The deep-seated melan- 
choly in his eyes indicated that the heavily burdened 



21 

spirit would have broken if it had not had some relief; 
and when I said that his spirit embodied the woe of 
Lear and the tragedy of Hamlet, and would have 
snapped had it not had the humor of ' The Merry- 
Wives of Windsor ' and the merriment of ' Midsummer 
Night's Dream,' I uttered a truth well known to those 
who knew him best. His humor preserved the sanity 
and the integrity of his mind ; or, if Lincoln himself 
could have expressed it, he was ' always pulling and 
tugging at the butt-end of a log, or else sitting on 
the end, whittling for recreation and for rest.' Like 
Talleyrand, so many stories are credited to him that 
had he spent the whole of his presidential term and 
double that length of time in telling stories, the period 
would not have sufficed for the actual narration of all 
of them. But he made a plain statement of a case 
with a story. He evaded responsibility, at a time 
when responsibility ought not to be assumed, by 
the same means. When a visitor asked for informa- 
tion which he had no right to expect would be given, 
instead of having his feelings hurt by an abrupt reply, 
he would be told a story. When the merchants of 
New York, alarmed by the exploits of the Merrimac, 
sent their delegation to Washington, their spokesman 
told the President, 'We represent a hundred millions 
of our own money, we are loyal citizens, we have paid 
our taxes, and we want you, Mr. President, to send a 
gunboat into the harbor of New York in order to 



22 



protect us from the Merrimac,' Mr. Lincoln replied, 
' Gentleman, I am the President of the United States, 
I am the commander of the army and the navy, I can 
send ships in any direction I please, but at the present 
time every ship is engaged in some useful service ; I 
don't actually know where they are; but if I had 
one-half of your money and were only half as much 
" skeered " as you appear to be, I would buy or build a 
gunboat for myself and present it to the Government.' 
{Applause?) 

"When that gentle little Quaker lady who had 
received a revelation from on high that the President 
ought to emancipate the slave went into the White 
House and told her story, and told of Deborah and 
how she interfered in the matter of Sampson, the 
President queried thus : ' You believe that I have been 
chosen by the Lord to carry on this Government ? ' 
' Yes, Mr. President.' ' Well, if you believe that, 
why should n't the Lord have revealed my duty to me 
instead of to you?' {Merriment?) When the clergy- 
men of Chicago, drawing themselves up en masse, 
insisted that he should, in response to a revelation 
from on high, of which they were the God-sent mes- 
sengers, immediately emancipate the slave, the Presi- 
dent said, ' Gentlemen, I recognize your mission and 
your high calling, but, believing that I myself am a 
servant of the Lord, I am a little at a loss to understand 
why He should have chosen such a round-about route 



2 3 

as the wicked city of Chicago in order to communicate 
with me.' (Co?itinued merriment.) When a sudden 
raid was made and a brigadier general and 200 mules 
were captured by the rebels, Mr. Lincoln remarked, 
'Well, about that brigadier, I probably could supply 
his place in five minutes, but as to those mules, they 
cost us $200 apiece.' When trouble was made over 
the retirement of one of the members of his Cabinet, 
and a great difficulty ensued, and finally pressure 
was exerted to secure the removal of all the remain- 
ing members of the Cabinet, he said, ' Gentlemen, 
your request reminds me of that man out in San- 
gamon County, 111., who was much troubled with 
skunks, and he went out with a gun and killed one 
of them at the wood-pile. When his wife accosted 
him with "I thought you were going to shoot that 
whole lot of skunks," his answer was, "Yes, Jane, 
I went out there, saw five skunks and shot one of 
them, but the one that I killed made such a 'tarnal 
smell that I thought I would let the others live." ' 
{General merriment?) When much pressed by an 
office-seeker, who insisted on having recognition, and 
who, upon being refused, began to abuse the Presi- 
dent, Mr. Lincoln, with true dignity, said, ' Sir, I can 
submit to censure, but I will never tolerate insult,' 
and, taking hold of the man with his long, strong 
hand, promptly ejected him from the room. 

" These incidents give you but one phase of the 



24 

character of the man, and by some they are regarded 
as showing his characteristics. But place beside them 
his utterances in State papers. You will search the 
literature of Presidential proclamations in vain for 
anything finer in the English tongue, nay, in human 
speech, than the language of the First Inaugural, or 
the Gettysburg address, or the Second Inaugural. 
Indeed, they read like inspired passages from Isaiah 
or Job. What an exquisite appeal, what a pathetic 
argument was that which was addressed to our erring 
Southern brothers: 'We are not enemies, we must 
be friends. The mystic cords of memory, stretching 
from every battlefield and every patriot grave to 
every living heart and hearthstone in this broad land 
of ours will swell again the chorus of the Union when 
touched, as they surely will be, by the better angels 
of our nature.' ' Fervently do we hope, fondly do we 
pray that this cruel scourge of war may pass away ; 
but if that is not to be, if God wills that it should 
last until all the wealth piled up by the bondsmen's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 
have been spent, and until every drop of blood 
drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by another 
drop drawn by the sword, still shall it be said, as was 
said three thousand years ago, the judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether.' (Applmise.) 
"Believing that the people would sanction his 
action, and convinced at last that the integrity of the 



25 

Union was only to be saved by the gift of freedom 
to the slave, he made a solemn vow that if the arms 
of McClellan were crowned with victory at the battle 
of Antietam, he would bless that achievement by 
issuing the Emancipation Proclamation ; and then, in 
the rapture of that joyous hour, dipping his pen in 
the sunlight, he signed his name to that immortal 
document, which enrolled him among the benefac- 
tors of mankind. This was his great, his crowning 
act — one which for all time will stand alone, like the 
Constitution of the United States, without a prototype 
and without a fellow. 

"The character of Lincoln? Ah, if that can be 
analyzed, it was his charity, his heartiness, his kindli- 
ness, his human sympathy, which endeared him to the 
multitude. But it was his relentless logical power, 
his clear perception, his grasp of details, his ten- 
acity of purpose, his sense of justice, his loftiness of 
view, his moral courage, — that magnificent equipoise 
of conscience, of heart, and of brain, — which lifted him 
up far above the heads of all other men, and which 
enabled him to place his country upon a plane so high 
and safe that the dastards of despotism no longer 
dared to question the might, the majesty, and the 
sublimity of freedom. 

" No voice but that of the archangel can now reach 
his ear, but his fame and his memory will be preserved 
and increase from age to age. When unseen fingers 



26 

strike back the bolts which lock out futurity, when 
this country shall have grown to two hundred millions 
of people, when one-third of the population of the 
earth shall speak the English tongue, when the dusky 
millions of distant islands shall learn to lisp the golden 
words of liberty, and free institutions are scattering 
blessings in every clime, then will the name of Lincoln 
as liberator be on every lip, and nothing but the 
spaciousness of centuries can fitly frame the grandeur 
of his fame. (Long-continued applause.) 

The President. — " Gentlemen, I know of no 
higher evidence of a gracious disposition than is 
exhibited by a gentleman who, coming to a dinner 
with no intention of speaking, is willing, upon a 
moment's notice, to lend his voice to entertain the 
company surrounding him. We have with us to- 
night a gentleman who is blessed with just that gra- 
cious character, who has very kindly consented to 
respond to the call now made upon him. I take great 
pleasure in introducing to you the Rev. Dr. Brownson." 



Response by Rev. Marcus A. Brownson, D.D. 

Dr. Brownson, when the applause which greeted 
him had subsided, said : 

"Mr. President and members of the Union League, 
assembled here to-7iight to commemorate the birth of 



27 

Abraham Lincoln: I have first to say to you, upon 
this call, that I have received so many kindly court- 
esies and such gracious treatment from the Union 
League, upon many former occasions, that I should 
feel myself to be an ingrate if I were unwilling now 
to rise for a few moments and mingle my voice in 
the praises which are ascending from this board unto 
our God for the birth and life and immortal fame of 
President Lincoln. I have, like every young Amer- 
ican, inherited a reverence for that great name. I 
have not in my possession treasures such as those 
of which Mr. Carson has so eloquently spoken this 
evening, but I do have a memento which I value 
highly. It is nothing else than a lock of hair which 
once grew upon the forehead of Abraham Lincoln. 
It was given to me by a lawyer in the West, to 
whom it had been given by Governor Bagley, of 
Michigan. I prize the little token as a treasure the 
value of which I can not estimate. I take it out fre- 
quently, and always upon this anniversary day, and 
I never look upon it without remembering the glory 
of that man of destiny, who stood for the preserva- 
tion of the Union in the time which has been so 
graphically pictured to us to-night by the distin- 
guished orator of the evening. 

" I will not ascend the platform on which Mr. Car- 
son has stood, for I could not hope to rise to the 
height of his eloquence in the few words which I 



28 

shall say, but with him and with you all I share the 
opinion that among all the great men whom our 
country has brought forth upon the stage of action 
Lincoln is preeminent. Mr. Stanton, whose picture 
yonder looks toward this portrait of Lincoln that is 
encircled with the red, white, and blue of our national 
emblem, when he stood by the bedside of the de- 
parted Lincoln, in Peterson's house, opposite Ford's 
Theater, at Washington (a picture of which appears 
on the menu card), exclaimed, as the President's 
pulse ceased to beat and his heart became still, ' Now 
he belongs to the ages.' It is said that, when that 
magnificent and stately funeral pageant had pro- 
ceeded from Washington to Baltimore, from Balti- 
more to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to New 
York, and then northward and westward, those 
who accompanied the mortal remains of Abraham 
Lincoln and who watched the great concourses 01 
people who assembled at various places to glance 
upon that face so solemn, so sad, and yet so sweet, 
as it was cold in death, began to realize the prophecy 
of Mr. Stanton as soon to be fulfilled. And was it 
not so that the press of England, which had defamed 
his character, which had misrepresented his motives, 
which had misconstrued his deliverances and the poli- 
cies he had announced, sent over the water the most 
gracious and kindly apologies for the sentences which 
they had printed, and joined with the people of this 



20 

great land in acknowledging his worth and his immor- 
tality. Although in the House of Lords and also in 
the House of Commons speeches which were care- 
fully delivered set forth a conservative opinion con- 
cerning Mr. Lincoln, the sentiment of the English 
people found its true expression when Queen Victoria 
wrote to the widow of Mr. Lincoln, as "a widow to 
a widow." There came to Washington from a patri- 
otic society of sunny France, inclosed in a little box, 
an assurance of French sympathy. Accompanying 
that token of affection was this message : ' The heart 
of France is in that box.' In the Netherlands the 
character of Mr. Lincoln was likened to that of 
William the Silent, whom Mr. Motley describes, 
when speaking of the assassination, as one who had 
gone through life bearing the load of a people's 
sorrows upon his heart, and " when he died, the 
little children wept in the streets." Like tributes 
were paid to Mr. Lincoln all over the civilized world, 
in all forms of literary expression, in addresses, in 
halls of legislation, and in the pulpits throughout 
Christendom. Even in the South Sea Islands, as we 
have heard to-night, the old negro declared his love 
and reverence for Mr. Lincoln when he said, ' He 
walked like Jesus.' 

" Mr. Lincoln's character has been so accurately 
analyzed, his life has been so beautifully portrayed, 
and the majesty of his achievements have been so 



3° 

glowingly set forth that it is not necessary to attempt 
a repetition ; but we do all give thanks unto God, 
to-night, that He raised up a child of the people at 
that critical hour, who also regarded himself as a 
child of destiny and who served his land in the fear 
of God and with the great day of eternal account 
ever before his eyes. His very kindliness of heart 
found early expression when, as a pioneer in the 
Western land, he was known to descend from his 
horse, as he passed through a forest, to lift a fledg- 
ling that had fallen from the nest overhead, that 
the mother bird might not lose her young beneath 
the feet of his steed. As we have heard to-nieht, he 
never could close his eyes in reposeful slumber if he 
knew that a soldier boy was to be shot down for a 
failure in duty, or when he thought of the mighty 
sorrow of an enslaved people. 

"I think that one of the most beautiful and 
pathetic pictures in literature is that which appears 
in the voluminous work on the life of Mr. Lincoln 
by Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, when they tell of his 
solicitude at the outbreak of the war, as he paced 
the great floor of the East Room of the White 
House, awaiting the coming of the belated troops 
from New England. When they came not he fell 
upon his knees at the window, looking out in the 
direction from which the troops were expected and, 
not knowing that he was observed, he cried in agony 



3i 

of soul, 'Oh, God, why do they not come?' This 
was one incident that tells of the self-sacrifice which 
caused him to be willing to bear upon his great 
heart the destinies of a nation for the ultimate eood 
of millions. 

" I suppose no speech concerning Mr. Lincoln 
would be at all complete without an allusion to a 
story or two of the many which have been credited 
to him. These stories, as Mr. Carson has sue- 
gested, show the occasions for recreation which 
were but outlets to the seriousness of his nature 
and aptly met the conditions by which he was 
surrounded. Perhaps you have heard this one : A 
certain man appeared before Mr. Lincoln as an appli- 
cant for a political appointment and presented a 
large number of letters which the President only 
cursorily glanced over, but, being pleased with the 
man's appearance and his evident honesty, assured 
him at once, 'I will give you the appointment.' The 
delighted seeker after office was about to depart joy- 
fully and in great haste when Mr. Lincoln called after 
him, ' One moment — here are the letters of recom- 
mendation which you have presented.' 'I care noth- 
ing for them,' said his beneficiary. 'Ah,' the Presi- 
dent rejoined, ' but if you come to Washington, you 
will need all these and more to get into St. John's 
Protestant Episcopal Church.' {Merriment}) 

"You remember to have heard a thousand such 



32 

stories. I recall having- heard once, at a gathering at 
a summer hotel, a lecture, or rather an evening talk, 
upon Mr. Lincoln's character, by Mr. Leonard C. 
Svvett, who practised law with him in the early history 
of Illinois. Mr. Swett was a man of huge size, be- 
ing taller and stouter than Mr. Lincoln. He and 
Judge Davis, a man of large frame also, were wont 
to travel together over the judicial circuit for the trial 
of cases. Judge Davis upon a certain occasion was 
called home by the serious illness of his wife, and 
Mr. Swett, with other lawyers, being far away from 
home and not desiring to return and then come back 
to finish the business of the court, held a conference, 
and concluded to elect one of their number to serve 
as judge temporarily, in the absence of Judge Davis. 
Mr. Lincoln was elevated to the position. A case 
came before the court, which may be briefly stated in 
this way : A farm-boy, after the harvest-time, had gone 
into the village and had ordered from a merchant 
tailor what, in those days, was considered a very hand- 
some suit of clothes, at a cost of twenty-eight dollars. 
The father of the boy refused to pay the bill, and a 
suit was instituted in order to effect a compulsory 
payment. The case having been argued before him 
as judge, Mr. Lincoln, in his charge to the jury, said 
that a suit of clothes costing as much as twenty-eight 
dollars was an unnecessary and unjustifiable expendi- 
ture on the part of any young American. He added : 



33 

'Inasmuch as I myself have never up to this time 
enjoyed the luxury of a suit of clothes costing that 
sum of money, I am compelled to charge the jury in 
accordance with my own views.' This statement was 
made by Mr. Lincoln only a short time before his 
nomination for the presidency. 

"The humble origin of the man ; his plain and 
simple style of life ; his identification with the common 
people whom he loved and to whose hearts and 
consciences, as he so often said, he always kept near, 
awaken at this late day increasing admiration for his 
character and his inherent greatness. Mr. Swett also 
recalled, as I remember his charming talk, the fact 
that Mr. Lincoln was exceedingly generous in his 
treatment of his brother-lawyers. Upon a certain 
occasion he said to Mr. Swett, ' Swett, did you ever 
notice that a door swings upon two, or at the most 
three, hinges? You may string fifty pairs of hinges 
upon the door, but they would be unnecessary, for 
only the two or three will swing it. And so it is in 
most of the cases at law. There are only one or two 
essential points in a case. Now, let 's be generous — 
we '11 give the other fellows all the other points and 
we will press for the two or three.' And the pressure 
for the two or three usually won the case. 

"We have heard Mr. Lincoln spoken of as a man 
of letters, as an orator of the highest rank ; and so 
he was. Otherwise Emerson and Lowell would not 



LofC 



34 

commend his homely utterances and compare them, 
for point and pith, to the fables of y^sop, nor would 
the literary men of our country and of the world 
declare that those trite phrases had taken rank with 
sentences in the immortal allegory of Bunyan for style 
and with the triumphs of literature which have most 
mightily impressed the human mind and moved the 
human heart. 

" He regarded himself as a child of destiny. It 
seems to me that that was the controlling char- 
acteristic of his great mind and his great life. At 
the close of the war military chieftains united in 
declaring that Mr. Lincoln had been the greatest 
strategist of the conflict. And if he was generous 
to the men in the field, to those in command, and 
to the men in the ranks, if he trusted those whom 
he sent forth to the field of battle, it only added 
to his greatness in that he had confidence in other 
men, and believed that they, like himself, appreciated 
the responsibility imposed upon them. 

" The northernmost grave on the face of the earth, 
in the Arctic region, is marked by a plain copper 
plate affixed to a standard at the head, the inscrip- 
tion upon which is in these words : " Wash me and 
I shall be whiter than snow." The raging storm 
of to-night suggests the reference. I believe from 
many incidental evidences that the great soul of 
Lincoln often offered that prayer in secret to the 



35 

Saviour of the world and that, when he left the earth, 
he attained through grace to the immortal purity of 
the celestial land where no sorrow enters and where 
God wipes away all tears from the eye ; and that he 
looks down upon a land guided by his superior states- 
manship, delivered from perils by his far-sighted policy 
and wise utterances — upon a people whose future 
greatness he did not and could not foresee and com- 
prehend, but who will ever regard him as among the 
immortals of our American history, perhaps as the 
American preeminent, whose returning birth anni- 
versary each year develops an intenser love and a 
loftier admiration for his memory." 

The President. — " Gentlemen, expressing our ad- 
miration and appreciation of Mr. Carson's most bril- 
liant oration, and our acknowledgment to Dr. Brown- 
son for his gracious courtesy in making us so excellent 
an address, the Chair announces that the evening s 

o 

program has reached an end." 



